Flames crumble in their favourite period, lose 6-3 to the Ducks

The Calgary Flames have made life difficult on themselves plenty this season.

So on Friday night against the visiting Anaheim Ducks, they tried something new.

Instead of waiting until the last minute with their usual third-period comeback magic — 10 wins when trailing after two periods, by the way — they established a 1-0 lead in the first period.

Then, a 2-0 lead in the second. And, when the Ducks cut into their two goal advantage late in the middle frame, they weathered the storm.

But the Flames had no answer in their favourite period.

And, even worse, they folded up their chuckwagon stove and rode off into the sunset on Western Night at the Saddledome and surrendered a 6-3 loss to the visiting team.

Which happens to be 36-16-7 and still handily leading Western Conference.

“That’s two points that we gave away there with a 2-0 lead,” said Matt Stajan, who had snapped a 16-gam goalless drought and gave the Calgarians a 1-0 lead with 5:10 remaining the first period. “That’s where we have to respond better. Bad bounces are going to happen. We’ve been fortunate with some good bounces throughout the year. Sometimes you get bad bounces and you can’t just kind of roll over when that happens. You have to come back at them and we didn’t (Friday).”

Francois Beauchemin, Ryan Getzlaf, Kyle Palmieri, Jakob Silfverberg, and Hampus Lindholm scored in the third period to send the Flames on a seven-game road trip with a 32-23-4 record and stuck idle in third in the Pacific Division with 68 points.

Playing into the entire picture was the fact that the Ducks have been struggling lately, losers of two straight heading into Friday’s game and 3-6-1 in the last 10. They were also 24-0-7 in one-goalgames and the Flames found themselves in one of those situations with the visitors.

“We were in such a good position going into the third period,” said Flames winger Lance Bouma, who had also contributed to Calgary’s early lead scoring 2-0 midway through the second period. “Obviously, we were up 2-1 and that’s the position we want to be in.

“It’s just disappointing we couldn’t get that third goal and couldn’t prevent them from scoring any.”

Partially because Anaheim boss Bruce Boudreau looked like a genius when he split up Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry.

Perry, first, blasted a shot on Jonas Hiller and ironman Andrew Cogliano and he banked it in off his pants (nearly decapitating himself on the crossbar in the process) to cut the Flames’ lead in two with 4:52 left in the middle frame.

Meanwhile Getzlaf’s goal — Anaheim’s third — went off the backboards behind Hiller and ricocheted off the Flames’ net minder’s backside in the third-period comeback.

Cogliano also had the game of his life, with a goal, an assist, and a plus-3 rating. He came up big in the second period, beating Raphael Diaz in a foot race and slipping a pass over to Francois Beauchemin.

Beauchemin flicked it past Hiller with 6:13 elapsed and tied the game 2-2.

The Flames did good work in the first and second periods to put them in the driver’s seat. They also had a nice push in the final two minutes of the third period as Sean Monahan scored on the power-play. Didn’t matter though.

Early on, they failed to score on a power-play advantage with Corey Perry in the box for goaltender interference that turned into a 47-second five-on-three when Clayton Stoner — his first of two cross-checking infractions — nailed Johnny Gaudreau directly in his No. 13 on his back. In total, the Flames squandered away four man advantages.

Hiller, in the end, was peppered with 37 Ducks shots while Gibson — his successor — faced 28.

“From the bench, I don’t know, we didn’t have our energy,” said Flames head coach Bob Hartley. “Our decision making wasn’t as good as we usually are. Then, in the third period, that’s by far our worst third period we played all year.

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